50 years of minicabs

The first minicabs hit our streets 50 years ago, but as Andrew Roberts
reports, they were in for a rough ride.

On March 6 1961, London experienced a minor revolution that was to have widespread consequences, all thanks to a small number of Ford Anglia 105Es.

Fifty years ago, the standard image of the capital’s taxi cab as a black Austin FX3 or FX4, all of them driven by a Sid James clone, was about to be altered by Carline Cabs – the pioneer of the minicab.

Carline was exploiting a loophole in the 1869 Carriage Act, claiming that this only applied to cabs that “ply for hire” on the streets whereas their Anglias would operate by responding to calls phoned to the main office and then relayed to the driver.

In their first week of operation the 12-strong Anglia fleet carried 500 passengers – Carline’s fares were two thirds of those of the black cabs and drivers promised greater service to London’s outer suburbs, where there was barely any provision for a licensed taxi “door-to-door” service.

As a taxi, the Anglia was limited by having only two doors and so the main threat to the black cab took the form of a pair of imported minicabs that entered service that summer.

Tom Sylvester ordered 25 black and white-liveried Fiat Multiplas, a four-door, long-wheelbase version of the famed 600 that had already established itself in Rome – despite being well under 14 feet long it was a genuine six-seater – but it was the fleet of Renault Dauphines run by the car rental firm Welbeck Motors that became the public face of the minicab.

Welbeck’s managing director was an exceptionally publicity-conscious young law graduate named Michael Gotla. The media ran features about Gotla’s “£560,000 order” for 800 bright red Dauphine minicabs and how he planned to sell advertising space on the Renaults’ doors to garner an extra £75 per week.

Such was the Welbeck minicab’s fame that there was even a Dinky model of the company’s Dauphine plus considerable press support. “The reaction of the hard-done-by travelling public to the coming of minicabs is – the more the merrier,” claimed The Times.

So, on June 19 1961 dialling WELbeck 0561 would summon one of “Gotla’s Private Army”, clad in his regulation beige corduroy suit and forage cap, to the wilds of Plumstead or Merton Park, ready to transport you for a mere 1/- per mile.

Sadly, such sartorial elegance and reasonable fares cut little ice with hardened cabbies who had spent four years on learning “The Knowledge”– and most of their Army gratuity on buying a new Austin FX4 black cab.

The Minicab Wars were about to commence, with the sight of FX3s chasing Dauphines along Charing Cross Road and, in the “Battle of Belgrave Square”, the David and Goliath spectacle of a lone Multipla hemmed in on all sides by black Austins, “their exhaust pipes billowing clouds of diesel smoke, their cabbies shaking irate fists and shouting unprintable war cries”, according to the man from Time magazine.

Gotla claimed that six of his drivers were attacked, another 15, together with their wives, were threatened and that his fleet was regularly vandalised.

These reports inevitably gained the minicabs much public sympathy, but Welbeck’s drivers would sail fairly close to the wind.

They would tout for fares but then hand their car phone to the customer and ask him to place his order with the dispatcher – who would then repeat the same order to the driver.

A court ruling of May 31 1962 decreed that some minicabs were indeed plying for hire – and were therefore breaking the law.

Legend has it that Gotla’s entire army was instantly demobbed via a frantic radio message ordering them to drive their Dauphine to the nearest convenient dark alley and strip it of all advertising.

The first wave of the minicab era was over, leaving behind two important legacies – 1963’s classic comedy Carry On Cabby and the idea that if the black cab is “traditional”, any motoring tradition is still only as good as those who maintain it.